Search Engines

Transcript Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization
for Your Web Site
Dr. Soe, Dr. Westfall & CIS Dept.
California Polytechnic University,
Pomona, March 2013
http://www.csupomona.edu/~rdwestfall/
120common/searchplace120.ppt
Agenda
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Introduction
Steps to take to make your pages show
up higher in search engines
How do search engines work?
How do you get your web site listed?
Search engine exercise
Introduction: Search Engines
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Search engines return lists of links
based on search words entered by user
Most users only look at 10-20 items in
search output before changing words
Placement--how high a web page is in
the listings--is critically important in
generating traffic from search engines
High Search Engine Placement
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"We can guarantee you a top 10
ranking"
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What's it worth?
How can they do it?
zapmeta.com search on Mrs. Westfall
shows high rankings in Yahoo, MSN,
Altavista and Teoma
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Does not include Google, but see next page
High Search Engine Placement
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Google searches on specified words
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Mrs. Westfall
Westfall telecommuting
forget evolution
textbook ripoff
What Are "Key Words?"
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Words that are what your web page is
really about
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Just as the words in the title of a text book
are what it's about
Usually are found in your page a lot
Words that people would use to search
for a web page like yours
Putting Key Words in Pages
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In the text of your pages, using an
authoring tool like Dreamweaver
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Make sure that keywords are in the visible
text of your page fairly often, especially in
prominent places such as near top, in links,
headers, etc.
In the code of your pages
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Using an editor like Notepad
Or using authoring tool's code window
Putting Keywords in Code
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Put keywords into <title> tag
Put keywords in <H1> tag at page top
Put keywords into <img alt=" "> tags
Put keywords in the text of links and in
the letters of the URL also if possible
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e.g., www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/
Code Examples
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Include some keywords in phrases in
important HTML tags, but do it in a
natural phrase that describes things
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Replace <title>Untitled-1</title> with a
<title>[keywords]</title> in <head> area
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If no <title> tags in <head> section, put
<title>[keywords]</title> there
Example: <title>Cindi's Cat</title>
Code Examples - 2
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Image tags
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Replace <img src="file1.jpg"> with <img
src="[keywords].jpg" alt="[keywords]">
Example: <img src="cindiscat.jpg"
alt="Cindi's cat">
Header tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 or h6)
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Replace <p>[some words at top of page]
with <h1>[keywords among words]</h1>
What Not to Do
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Don’t use keywords that are not related
to the content of the page
Don’t repeat keywords in any ways that
don’t make sense
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Not in very small text
Not in text color similar to background
color
Not repeated many times in a row
Register your Web Site with
Search Engines
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Register individually with top sites
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Try site submission web sites?
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Yahoo! , MSN, Open Directory Project (goes
into Google, etc.)
Manta submits business web sites for free to
Google, Yahoo and Bing
But will probably send you a lot of spam
Change content, resubmit every so often?
Search Engines Deliver Indexes
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User requests information via search page
Query engine searches database
Delivers list of web resources
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Creates results web page based on search
Listed in order of a calculated index
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Index values based on search words, and also
on "popularity" of site
But usually preceded by "paid placements"
Web Directories
Built by Human Indexing
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Analyze site’s purpose
Classify sites by broad subject area
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Hierarchical classification schemes
Yahoo! - has many people reviewing web
site submissions
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Doesn't have to accept submissions
6 week delay unless pay for priority service?
Meta Search Engines
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Don't have their own databases or
indexing
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Instead, combine results from other search
engines
Examples
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Dogpile, Vivisimo
Ixquick (top 10 listings in other search
engines)
Search Engines Ranked by %
of People that Use Them
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Google
56.3%
Yahoo
21.5
MSN
8.4
AOL
5.3
Source: Nielsen/Net Ratings quoted in
Wikipedia Search engine article as of
July 2007
Get Site Into Directories
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Directories (e.g., Yahoo!) require careful
selection of search categories & keywords
Search for your keywords on Yahoo! to find
appropriate categories
Yahoo! asks for a 25-word description of
content
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Make it really good to impress human indexers
Targeting Spiders
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Pick "keywords" that people would use to find
a page like yours
Make these keywords prominent in your web
pages, especially in the entry page
Meta Tags
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Keywords meta tag used to be important
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<meta name="keywords" content=
"telecommuting, research, telecommuting
research, telecommute, telecommutes,
telecommuter, telecommuters">
Search engines generally ignore them now
because of widespread attempts to use them to
manipulate rankings
Meta Tags - Description
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Even though not used much in rankings
anymore, contents of following tag are
shown in Google outputs
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<meta name="description"
content="Westfall research and papers on
telecommuting, telecommuting
productivity, telecommuting economic
analyses, telecommuting strategies">
Keywords for Spiders
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All keywords are not created equal spiders give heavier weights to:
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Keywords in the <title> (more than once?)
Keywords in <h1> and other headers
Keywords in other text near top of page
Keywords in <img alt="[keywords]"> tags
Keywords in links (seen by user or in URLs)
How Search Engines Rank Web Pages
More Keywords for Spiders
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Use keywords frequently, but don't repeat same
word more than once in a row
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Use variations of keywords (plurals)
Use keywords in alternate text for images
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OK: pizza pizza
Not good: pizza pizza pizza pizza pizza pizza
<img src "file.jpg" alt="[keywords]">
Google Search Engine Optimization 101 My list
Links for Spiders
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Number of pages linking to a site has
become extremely important
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Google pioneered this
If high ranking pages link to a site on the
same topic, it must be good
Quality of links is also important
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Need to be relevant both to page they are
on and to linked page
Trying to Fool Spiders
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Search Engine "Spamming":
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Spiders are being programmed to detect it
Examples:
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Repeat hidden keywords
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in background color, or <font size=1>
Keywords not related to site content
Irrelevant links: "link farms" or "link
stuffing" (ethical issues)
"I can guarantee a top 10 …"
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Junk mail and web sites
True, but…
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Not for your 1st choices of key words
Use relatively unique combination of
several words, and put them into key
parts of page (<title>, <H1>, etc.)
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Probably not many people will search for
this combination of words
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e.g., telecommuting productivity
Guaranteed Top 10 Listing
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Use misspelled words
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Search for these made-up words
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Including 2 words ran together (no space
between e.g., muhammedgonzales)
Keep trying until you find a "word" not
found on any other page
Put in page, get links to page in another
page(s), submit to search engine(s)
Googlewhacks
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Identify two words, NOT in quotation
marks, that get only one result in
Google
Examples
Exercise: find another Googlewhack
"Google Bombing"
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Drives traffic to other pages by links
and keywords
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Early (2001) Google bombing campaign
Wikipedia Google bomb article
Wikipedia Political Google bombs article
Search Engine Exercise
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Search for your keywords on any
automated search engine
For top 2-4 sites, look for keywords in:
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<meta...>, <title>, <h1>, <a href="…>,
<img… alt="…>, etc. (use View, Source)
Words in page, esp. near top
Also use Google advanced search (PageSpecific) to find pages linking to these sites
Report any patterns you see